WHITE RIVER JUNCTION — A Proctor woman pleaded innocent this week to six felony counts of defrauding the federal Medicaid program of nearly $10,000 over a three-year period.

Mandi Delancey, 33, entered the pleas Tuesday morning at the Windsor County courthouse in White River Junction because the payment processing service that sends out checks on behalf of Vermont’s Medicaid program is based in White River Junction.

Detective Jefferson Krauss with the Vermont Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud and Residential Abuse Unit charged in an affidavit that Delancey defrauded the jointly administered state and federal program by filing a series of false time sheets for hours that she didn’t actually work.

In his affidavit filed with the court, Krauss said that Delancey was hired as a caregiver under Medicaid’s “Attendant Services” program. The program pays people, who are often relatives or friends of the disabled person being helped, to provide care services. Krauss said that in 2006 Delancey was hired to provide up to 109 compensated hours per month to a relative of hers who, for reasons of medical privacy, was identified in court documents only as “Recipient A.”

Krauss said that he and Health and Human Services Department Special Agent Frank Puleo began an investigation in 2012 after other relatives of Delancey’s complained that they were providing most of the care to “Recipient A” while Delancey “occasionally assisted.” The relatives claimed Delancey was largely “not there for the budgeted care hours she was consistently paid for.”

Krauss said his investigation found that between 2009 and 2012 Delancey was employed as one of several private caregivers for an elderly man in Salisbury who has since died but who, during his last years, required “around the clock services.” Krauss said family members of the man described Delancey as “a good caregiver” who worked about 40 hours per week “both day and nighttime.”

Krauss said he compared the extensively documented log books kept by all of the man’s caregivers, including Delancey, with the time sheets she submitted to the Medicaid program “documenting her care of ‘Recipient A’” and “identified 271 overlapping dates and times” involving a total of $9,495 worth of Medicaid checks for time when she was actually working in Salisbury, Krauss alleged.

Delancey faces a maximum potential penalty of up to 60 years in prison and/or fines of up to twice the amount of money that was allegedly misappropriated if she were to be convicted of all of the felony charges now pending against her.